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INDUSTRY INSIGHT
BY PETER DOYLE
If you’re considering PaaS, listen to Mick Jagger
IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS,
government clients have embraced infrastructure-as- a-service and software-as-a- service products to support ongoing cloud mandates. For all their complexity, those solutions are relatively simple to implement because they are either unseen by the end user (IaaS) or driven by agency pol- icy that dictates how solutions will function (SaaS). Either way, the need for stakeholder management is limited.
That is not the case with platform-as-a-service prod- ucts, however.
Although IT profession-
als have historically written code to support implementa- tions, PaaS works best when product functionality is con- figured to meet the require- ment. Stakeholders create problems when they want to replicate the way business is currently conducted because doing so can require complex, custom coding.
Platform providers, like Salesforce, have an army of developers, quality assur- ance experts and testers who ensure that their products function flawlessly. Aggressive customization of PaaS prod- ucts raises significant risks that custom code won’t work with a future release or that operating and maintenance costs to sustain the custom code will escalate.
Wasn’t avoiding those risks the point of moving to the
cloud in the first place? With PaaS products, IT
managers must aggres-
sively control stakeholder requirements to maintain the platform’s integrity. My advice to clients follows my favorite Rolling Stones song:
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find You get what you need
In large organizations, any
which means they meet the majority of stakeholder needs out of the box and offer ad- ditional functionality.
• Identify functionality that makes stakehold- ers’ lives easier. One way to persuade stakeholders is to show them how their needs and wants can be addressed by using out-of-the-box capabilities.
• Include product and solution architects in
to discuss options. PaaS solution design is not black or white — it’s an ever-changing shade of gray that is influ- enced by regulatory changes, stakeholders, politics and personalities. Agencies should create relationships with stakeholders and have an ongoing conversation with them about their needs and the available product options.
•Use independent soft- ware vendors. Such compa-
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Understanding the difference between what you need and what you want is directly tied to a cloud project’s success.
level of change is disruptive, and major system changes are often seen as a threat. Some of the pushback I’ve received includes, “We don’t do it that way,” “Legal said...” and my personal favorite, “We’re different.”
Helping stakeholders understand the difference between what they need and what they want is challeng- ing, but it is directly tied to a cloud project’s success. Here are some of the approaches
I have found to be effective with PaaS implementations:
• Educate key stake- holders early. PaaS prod- ucts have been constructed to meet the dynamic needs of commercial enterprises,
discussions. PaaS product architects are essential to the design and ongoing “what
if ” analysis that is part of problem solving. They are valuable experts who can help explain a product’s ca- pabilities, design alternatives and cost options.
• Establish a “no code” policy up-
front. Such a policy pushes architects to maximize a product’s functionality with- out coding and pushes business users to modify their processes to meet out-of- the-box functionality. That approach forces all sides to work together and compro- mise on design.
• Create a tradespace
nies provide solutions that add functionality without custom coding, which makes a PaaS product even more robust.
Out-of-the-box functional- ity, complementary vendor tools and limited operations and maintenance costs make platform products an obvious choice for many government legacy systems. Getting stake- holders to embrace them is difficult, but not impossible. IT managers who guide the transition will likely, as Mick Jagger sings, get a “fair share of abuse.” However, educat- ing stakeholders about PaaS solutions can overcome initial obstacles. •
— Peter Doyle is a director at Phase One Consulting Group.